Penny Buttonwick's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

By midmorning, Penny climbed back down to her mat to check the path. Two pixies stood waiting at the edge — not her recruits. They held up small leaves marked with her own numbers. "Three toggles for one shell," one said. "That's your rate, yes?" Penny froze. She had written that rate on one poster, tacked inside the trunk. Yet here it was, in strangers' hands, before her exchange had even opened. She walked the brush in a tight loop. On a low branch, a small wooden table had been set out, her rates carved along its edge. Further on, a colorful poster of her button values was pinned to bark, copied in a hand not her own. Pixies clustered around it, pointing, arguing prices. Her numbers were loose in Nettlevale now, drifting from leaf to leaf without her name on any of them. Penny's jaw tightened. Someone had peeked, copied, and spread. She thought of the pixie in the trunk — gold-dusted, fearful, eyes flicking. A spy could carry numbers out as easily as a button in. She returned to her mat and spread her tray of buttons wide at its center, every rare find laid bare for any pixie to see. If her rates were public, she would be the public source. She tore down the nearest copied poster and pinned her own beside the tray. "Trade here," she called, loud enough to carry. The exchange was open. It was hers to anchor now — or hers to lose.